Motivation and initial question:
Squirrels are found everywhere, and it’s observed that some places
have more squirrels than others, but is there any trend of where they
stay with respect to their colors, ages, activities or all other
features? Doing an analysis using squirrel census data may answer the
question.
Main final goal:
The main final goals of the project are to make maps according to the
census and build functions to predict locations of particular squirrels
if their characteristics are provided so that people can use the website
to look for the kinds of squirrels they like.
Inspirations:
The maps-making process shown in class caught our eyes since it is a
clear and direct way to convey the information. A website called The
Squirrel Census (https://www.thesquirrelcensus.com/about ) did research
on the squirrels too, but it doesn’t provide any predictions, so we aim
to develop a prediction system. Also, in order to attract more people to
the website, some interactive plots will be made to fully introduce the
raw dataset. The census provides only the data of central park in 2018,
so other datasets like data of central park in other years or data in
2018 of other places will also be collected to make comparisons of any
location changes.